The President of AMMBAN (Association of Mobile Money and Banking Agents of Nigeria), Fasasi Sarafadeen Atanda has confirmed the collaboration proposed from Nigerian Electronic Fraud Forum (NeFF) together with the Nigerian Inter-Bank Settlement Systems (NIBSS) to create a feature that will flag fraudulent transactions on PoS terminals in Nigeria.
This was disclosed in an announcement on January 30, 2024 and will go live on PoS machines by the end of Q1 2024.
Fasasi, AMMBAN President said “We are at a very advanced stage, and we’re about to finish the technology side of it in terms of activating some features.”
The feature represents a positive move, and it also questions what stage the solution is in and the technical details of how it will work. This is because two of the companies that own PoS machines in Nigeria are not aware of this feature or how it will be implemented.
All that has been disclosed is that certain KYC information would be sought prior to any transaction being completed; however, it remains unclear if the agent or proof-of-stake devices will need these details.
The rise in PoS transactions around the nation is the cause of this spike in fraud cases. PoS transactions increased to ₦1.152 trillion ($1.2 billion) in 2023 from ₦167.58 billion ($185.8 million) in 2017, according to Statista.
Data from the Financial Institutions Training Centre (FITC) revealed that in Q2 2023, there were 1,994 cases of PoS fraud in Nigeria resulting in a loss of ₦428 million ($474,770).